Blood Debt
by labyrinths
Summary: AU: Jerry ended up leaving Vegas with Amy as his new, reluctant assistant. She's still human. But for how long? Where is her woodsman? Where is her happy ending?


**Blood Debt**

**By Hedge Labyrinth**

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><p>AU: Jerry ended up leaving Vegas with Amy as his new, reluctant assistant. She's still human. But for how long?<p>

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><p>Amy looks jealously at the teenagers at the mall. She can never be like them again, though sometimes she likes to pretend she is. Just a regular girl, just another young woman shopping, giggling, having fun, kissing her boyfriend in the food court.<p>

These days, Amy has no boyfriend and she spends more time hiding trails of corpses than giggling about anything.

She's in the hardware store right now, purchasing some more nails, rope, a saw: the usual tools.

Jerry moves around a lot. Before this old house, it was an abandoned motel in Arizona and before that – Jesus, she think he was trying to creep her out – a condemned mental asylum.

Amy holds a hammer in her hands and thinks about bashing Jerry's head with it when he sleeps, but she's learned the hard way where that'll lead her. She puts the hammer down and considers running out of the hardware store, out of the mall, and driving away. But some time the sun must set and he will find her.

She doesn't like being his familiar, but she doesn't want to die either.

Amy pushes her shopping cart towards the cashier and reaches into her pockets, tossing a fistful of crumpled bills onto the counter.

She wheels the cart into the parking lot, loads her things, drives back and waits for a good five minutes inside the car, looking at the old house. Finally, she steps out and drags her things inside.

She could pretend someone's going to come and save her. Charley or Peter. But she doesn't think they have a clue where she is. And if they did, Jerry would tear them to pieces.

She's his property now. The payment for all the trouble he had to go through.

He once told her to think about it just like that: a debt. Her boyfriend had maxed out his credit and Jerry had collected. Oh, how he had collected.

Amy nails a few panels, blocking the light in the kitchen and pauses to wonder what he'll do when he's done collecting and he's fed up with her.

She doesn't really want to consider that possibility.

Amy grabs the axe and considers making vampire burgers out of Jerry. But no. What she needs is firewood.

Jerry does not mind the cold but it's starting to get chilly and there is no heat inside the house. He won't let her freeze to death but he won't mind her making her uncomfortable. Amy supposes she could ask him nicely to bring in some wood for the fireplace. He's certainly got the muscles. Fuck that. She's been chopping her own wood. It gives her a perverse pleasure to raise the ax and pretend it's his chest.

She's sweaty and tired when she's done and her arms ache. Amy steps into the bathroom. Green tiles. Old and ugly. She showers and looks at the water pour down the drain for a very long time. Finally, she dries herself, puts on a t-shirt, a flannel shirt on top. By the time she lights the fire, scooting close to the flames, dusk has come.

He doesn't make any noise when he leans down to speak to her.

"How was your day?" he asks, a long nail brushing a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Fine."

"Good work in the kitchen."

"Well, at least I'm learning a trade."

"Funny."

Amy stares at the flames. "When are you going to let me go?"

"Oh, I'll keep you forever. Forever and ever. Isn't that what you teen girls like to hear?"

_Fuck you_, she thinks, and she feels stupid for even asking, though she can't stop herself from doing it. She just keeps asking him. It's a nervous tic. It's like maybe one day he'll accidentally grow a heart and free her. Of course he won't. But one can hope, no?

Where is her woodsman? Where is her happy ending?

She should shove him into the fire and laugh as his skin blackens.

Jerry's clawed hands cup her face, turning it towards him. He grins at her.

"Are you trying to figure out a new way to kill me?"

"Third time's the charm," she mutters.

"You are adorable when you play the badass."

"Ugh," she says, scuttling back.

He shrugs and stands up, heading to the other side of the room and sweeping away the curtain to look at the moon. It is the last room that they needed to shutter and she feels really sad knowing there will be no moonlight the next day. The house will be closed and dark and quiet and she will walk around it, like a beetle making its way through a tomb.

Jerry looks very pale under the moon's glow. He resembles a statue, one white hand resting against the cracked window pane, eyes very serious and fixed on some undetermined point.

Amy wants to cut his perfect face with a piece of glass. She wants to make him bleed and she can't.

She bites her lip, hard.

Jerry gives her a lazy look.

"Come to me," he says extending an arm towards her.

Amy goes and he places his hands on her shoulders.

They watch the night sky in silence.


End file.
